


Peaches Are God’s Candy

by Feytwilight



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:14:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3283283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feytwilight/pseuds/Feytwilight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My brother…  He’s like fire, and ice.  Like a cool, smooth whiskey that sears the throat as it warms your belly.  My savior, who would burn the world, himself included, to find the answers he seeks, a monstrous angel, a saintly demon, and my dearest friend, Raymond Red Reddington…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Peaches Are Sweeter Than Apples

1994

The door above slammed inward allowing light to invade the darkness of the basement he had been chained up in for the past two days.  If Dembe could have moved his arms to shield himself from the sudden bright glare, he would have.  A body was unceremoniously chucked out of the light and down the stairs.  It landed hard onto the packed ground and rolled into a nearby wall where it settled into a crumpled heap on its side, facing him. One of the men who’d helped throw the body, Bandu, Dembe’s ears quickly supplied, laughed cruelly as the door was slammed shut, leaving the filthy dank room in bless-ed darkness once more. The only light shown from a small inset window set high along the far wall letting in a modicum of moonlight that slanted its silvery way across the dirt floor, almost but not quite reaching his knees. 

Dembe chewed at his lip, sucking at the salty blood there to help soothe his aching throat. His dark eyes looked to the dead body across from him.  He’d seen many dead in his short years, too many to remember or count, too many to even care about anymore.  So he studied the man across from him.  For a man it was, a very pale middle-aged white man, small, weak and skinny.  The man’s arms were cuffed behind his back and his face and white shirt were bloodied.  His eyes were shut, and Dembe was grateful for that.  Dying was hard enough without having a dead man staring at you while you expired. Because he _was_ dying, he knew that, he felt it. They’d told him when they chained him up that he would die down here, and he believed them.  They were going to leave him here until he rotted away, just like the man across from him would. 

He idly wondered who the man was, and what he had done to deserve death. Maybe he had refused to pay for the services rendered upstairs, or maybe he was just some tourist who had wandered down the wrong alley at the wrong time.  It didn’t really matter.  Dembe was almost jealous of the dead man, angry with him even.  At least he was comfortably dead, not chained to a pipe and hurting, and hungry, and thirsty, and…he had to stop thinking about that. He just had to think about something else, anything else besides what he was feeling, what was happening. God, he was dying, finally dying! He didn’t want to die. He had to live, he’d lived through so much, he had done so much to survive, and he couldn’t die now! He panicked and began pulling wildly at the chains, trying to drag them off the pipe or even through it, frantically struggling and causing the manacles to dig deeper into the scabs on his wrists and making blood pool down his bruised dark arms once more. A soft gravely voice cut through the clanking chains and desperate sounds he was making.  “I don’t suppose you know Marabe do you, she’s a fruit seller, delightful woman, pleasingly plump.  Has a stall, a few miles away, sells the most marvelous peaches…”

Dembe ceased his struggles and stared deep into the dead man’s now open eyes.  The man lifted his head from the filth of the floor as he searched around the room taking everything in a glance.  He sucked in a pained breath.  “Do you speak English?”  He asked curiously, looking back towards the boy, while his arms began shifting behind his back.  Having received no response he asked in fluent Swahili.  “ _What’s your name?_ ” The teen stared silently and carefully at the man, refusing to answer.  The man sighed and shook his head.  “ _I’m not your enemy and ignorance is not a skill to cultivate._ ” He said calmly. A click sounded as the handcuffs snicked open.  Dembe gaped as the man smiled grimly and brought his arms to his front.  He slowly raised himself to his feet by leaning against the blacked wall and felt gingerly at his ribs before wincing.  The man closed his eyes for a long moment, sighing again, as he moved his hands to rub at his wrists, flexing his long fingers as the circulation returned. 

He then began to fastidiously straighten his clothing, wiping uselessly at the dirt and blood on the side of his face with his sleeve as he started to walk over to the fourteen year old. Dembe leaned back from the man as much as he was able, though it hurt to do so.  The man stilled, cocking his head questioningly as he raised lock picks in one hand.  Dembe glared at him, hardly daring to hope for anything besides yet more pain and abuse, before nodding wordlessly.   The teen tensed as the man approached slowly, telegraphing his every movement as he simply knelt and used his picks to free him before slipping them back into his shirt cuff and moving a few steps back from the boy, giving him space.  Dembe brought his aching arms down and wrapped them around his shaking body. He looked up at the slight man with tears that he didn’t know he still had in him, stinging the corners of his eyes.

“Dembe.” The teen croaked, his throat still painfully dry as he climbed to his bare feet. 

“Hmm?” The man asked, not recognizing the word.

“ _My n-name_.”  Dembe stuttered.  The man looked the starved boy over, feeling his ever-present black rage reaching a crescendo, while cataloguing Dembe’s various injuries in his mind and planning to repay each outrage against the poor lad and against himself of course.  He reached into the pocket of his black pants and pulled out a small bruised peach and held it out to him.

“ _Well,_ Dembe _, It’s a pleasure to meet you.  I’m_ Red _and I’m going to teach everybody in this place a much needed lesson, would you like to aid me?_ ” The boy cautiously reached out and took the peach.  He bit into it with relish, some of the excess juice dripping down his chin to land at his feet. He devoured it in all of a moment and dropped the pit to the floor, before his angry eyes, far older than any boy’s should rightfully be, met the man’s merciless gaze.

“ _Yes._ ”  The boy growled in reply.  Red’s lips curved up, though it could hardly be called a smile, it promised retribution, terror, and death to all those who crossed him and those he considered his.

“ _Then let us find our way out of this pit shall we?_ ”


	2. Chapter 2

Red didn’t wait for an answer before crossing over to the breaker box situated along the far wall and opening its casing.  He stared at the unlabeled and locked in switches for a full minute, lost in thought, and then abruptly shrugged.  “Sometimes brute force is the best answer.”  The man mumbled to himself in English, before turning around and reaching for a pipe that stuck out of the wall to the side.  He pulled and twisted at it, trying to wiggle it out of its place between the wall and ceiling. Dembe staggered over to help him, wrapping his hands above Red’s own straining ones.  Red flickered his eyes at him and smiled as together they managed to pry the short length of pipe from the wall with a groan of rusted metal. Dembe looked towards the door above them nervously, hoping no one had heard.  No one came.  Dembe then saw that Red was hefting the pipe and preparing to destroy the box. Red nodded back at where the boy had been chained.  “ _When they come down to fix the electrics, its imperative that they think nothing is amiss, so I’ll go back to being unconscious and you’ll need to go back to where you were and hold your arms to the chains. Think you can do that_ Dembe?” The boy nodded solemnly and moved over to kneel on the floor once more with his hands dangling from the chains he held.  Red smiled at him. Before Dembe could even think about asking the question popped from his lips.

“ _Why?_ ”  He hissed like steam escaping a kettle.  Red rested the pipe along one shoulder and gestured with his other hand.

“ _Why?  Could you be more specific, we do unfortunately have a time limit on our escape_ _and I am not looking forward to being handed back over to the States for the price on my head._ ”  Red said, frowning into the distance.

“ _Why are you helping_ _me?_ ” Dembe whispered desperately. Red looked over at him seriously.

“ _Oh don’t misunderstand me, I’m not helping you, I’m helping myself, and you’re just along for the ride son_.”  Red stated.  Dembe lips curled.

“ _I’m not your son._ ”  He spat.  Red snorted.

“ _Of course not, don’t be ridiculous, you look nothing like me… Actually you look a bit like this fisherman I met down in Norway, built taller than the entire team of_ Globe Trotters _stacked atop one another. Absolutely_ hated _my guts.  However, I’ve never met a man who was a better judge of character.  Could look a man straight in the eyes and just know exactly what sort of person he was.  Amazing._ ” Red chuckled quietly to himself before suddenly swinging the pipe violently into the breaker box over and over; causing sparks to shower across the floor until both the pipe and box were in unrecognizable pieces. They could hear the sizzle of the electricity as the brothel lost power and the startled and scared cries that echoed from above.  Immediately Red dropped the useless remains of the pipe and ran to the spot he had originally been tossed in across from the stairs.  He took off his black tie and clasped both it and his hands behind his back before lying on his side.  His eyes sought out Dembe’s one last time.  “ _When all hell breaks loose, stick close to me and I’ll try to see you get out of this alive._ ”  Red said before closing his eyes and falling completely limp, a dead man once more.


End file.
